Conspiracy theory researcher and debunker

The April 23rd Nibiru Rapture

If you’re thinking of doing anything productive with your life, you might want to hit the gas, since according to numerologist David Meade, April 23rd is going to be the day when the rogue solar system body known as Planet X (also called Nibiru by believers) appears in the sky above the Earth.

When that happens, life on Earth will be doomed by “huge volcanoes and volcanic eruptions due to [Nibiru’s] gravitational force,” Meade claimed in British tabloid The Express.

The Rupert Murdoch infotainment complex picked up the story, with both the Daily Mail and Fox News quickly jumping on it.And what do these stories have by way of evidence? Only THE BIBLE, folks.

After all, the Good Book lays out the template for how the world will be destroyed in Revelation 12: 1-2, reading “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.”

According to Meade, this ancient text perfectly presages what’s going to happen in April. “During this time frame, on April 23, 2018 the moon appears under the feet of the Constellation Virgo,” Meade told the Express.

“The 12 stars at that date include the nine stars of Leo, and the three planetary alignments of Mercury, Venus and Mars – which combine to make a count of 12 stars on the head of Virgo. Thus the constellations […] represent a unique once-in-a-century sign exactly as depicted in the 12th chapter of Revelation. This is our time marker.”

Meade’s not even the only person predicting the end times starting soon. One rapture site bellows “The final Jubilee ends on Nissan 1 (April 18, 2018)!. There will have been 40 complete Jubilee cycles following Christ’s death. (emphasis original),” backing up its claim with more Bible verses and some extremely complex math.

With Rupert Murdoch and God in your corner, you can’t be wrong, right?

To dispense with the obvious thing first, we have no compelling evidence that “Nibiru” or “Planet X” actually exist. The “Nibiru cataclysm” idea has been around since 1995, cooked up by a woman who claimed to be “a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain.”

She didn’t exactly know what Nibiru was, but knew it was five times the size of Earth, and would make the planet stop spinning, cause a magnetic pole shift, then tear apart the Earth’s crust.

Her original date for Nibiru’s approach was 2003, which was postponed when, Nibiru did not, in fact, approach.

This story is bananas. The guy predicted the Rapture would happen last September. Then, when that didn't happen, he revised the prediction to October. Then he said it was November.

The scientific establishment has made it clear that any object five times the size of Earth would be easily visible, that the laws of physics make its purported orbit impossible, and that it would have destabilizing effects on every planetary body it came near – effects that have never been demonstrated.

So Nibiru, whatever it is, isn’t out there. At least not unless there’s a massive conspiracy to cover it up, and also make every person who looks at the night’s sky blind to it.

The “Revelation 12 sign” was the crux of almost an identical apocalypse prediction for September 23rd, using the same Biblical mumbo-jumbo to forecast Nibiru bringing death and destruction just before the baseball playoffs got underway.

The world isn't going to end on April 18 (the creepy voicemail hoax) or April 23 (the Rapture/Nibiru hoax). There's no solid evidence or good science to support this nonsense, and the dates will pass (like the dates in all previous predictions of Armageddon) without incident.

The Express even ran an almost identical story, quoting David Meade claiming that “the US will probably be split in half we will have experienced tsunamis, volcanic eruptions from Yellowstone, fire falling from the sky with trails of smoke, probably limited nuclear exchanges during that seven years.”

None of this stuff has any science to support it, so it’s easy enough to wait a few months, change a few dates, and slap together another prediction of doom. After all, it never actually happens, so who cares about the details?

Back in September, the Revelation 12 sign conspiracy got a lot of mainstream play, and probably sold a lot of books for David Meade.

So is Meade trying to wring a few more bucks out of a blown disaster prediction? Or is he really right this time?

Time will tell. The conspiracy community seems a little half-assed on this one, with not many articles or memes, the way September was. And I’m not canceling my plans for later this month.

But if you really, truly, think the world is going to end on April 23rd…well, you can find my PayPal account info easily enough.

Post navigation

2 thoughts on “The April 23rd Nibiru Rapture”

It’s April 24, 2018 now, and I did not see anything unusual in the sky yesterday. WRONG! Of course people still read stuff like this regardless of how terrible a track record the writer has. But this was a very short term boost as click bait. Now, where’s that giant planet?